


the grief wheel

by dustorange



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Gen, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Alfred Pennyworth, Time Loop, Trauma!, Young Adult Bruce Wayne, Young Bruce Wayne, and also, you know you know The Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:14:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustorange/pseuds/dustorange
Summary: “I couldn’t save you,” Alfred whimpered, fingers slipping out of Bruce’s. “I could never—”(Alfred gets trapped in a time loop of the night that Bruce's parents die. For Bad Thing Happen Bingo: Time Loop).
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	the grief wheel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Offendedfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Offendedfish/gifts).



> For Seal! Muah! 
> 
> I'm sorta obsessed with time loop fics right now so I have another one coming up with Dick for the WONDERFUL [katabasiss!!!](https://katabasiss.tumblr.com)
> 
> TW for throwing up

_Grief is a circular staircase. I have lost you._

[Linda Pastan](https://www.amazon.com/Five-Stages-Grief-Poems/dp/0393044947)

* * *

The phone rang. Alfred set the knife down. 

“Wayne Residence,” said Alfred crisply. “How may I be of service?”

A throat cleared. There was rain crackling on the other end. “This. Uh. Albert Pennyworth?”

_“Alfred_ Pennyworth. At your service.”

The rain on the other end kept falling. The voice was silent. Alfred pressed the phone between his cheek and shoulder so he could sweep the perfectly diced brunoise off the cutting board and into his palm, dropped it in the dark butter left of the pot of boiling pasta, and waited. The family was out for a night at the opera, and Alfred was preparing a light supper for when they returned. 

A moment passed. His mouth twitched. “How may I be of service, sir?” Alfred repeated, and the voice said. Said. 

“This is Sergeant James Gordon with the GCPD. I—have your boy with me. There’s been an incident.” The water boiled over. 

-

The police station was quiet.

Bruce was wet when Alfred arrived. He was a red and black speck in the distance that Alfred couldn’t miss. The little, starched cuffs of his tuxedo were flimsy and soaked through with blood. There was an unfamiliar, too large, cheap-looking jacket on his shoulders. That was wet, too. 

“He’s this way, sir.” The redhaired man pointed, drawing nearer. Alfred wanted to bite the finger he pointed at the wet little boy off, bring his teeth down on the sinew and wring it off the skewer-bone, then snap that in half, too. Snarl. _Do not_ dare _point at that child. Do not dare. I_ see _where he is._

—Alfred nodded curtly. Swallowed the words, the urge. Walked over to the chair they had placed the eight year old in. 

Bruce looked up. Alfred looked down.

_I will always see where he is,_ Alfred thought, slowly, haltingly, startling himself. 

There was a wet, bloody thumbprint on Bruce’s chin. His eyes were enormous.

Alfred held out a hand. Bruce took it. They went home. 

-

Bruce lay in Alfred’s bed, trembling. He had not spoken. They had not spoken. 

What was there to say? His parents were dead. Alfred was just a servant. Alfred kept his distance. Fondly patted the boy on the head and gave him sugar cubes against his mother’s counsel when he so asked for it. But Alfred had his letter of resignation printed out on ivory paper and tucked in his desk. Had enough money tucked away to go back to Kettering. Had written his mother months ago to expect him back in August. It was July. Alfred had always been stringless, never tied down. 

Now, Alfred stared up at the ceiling. He had shucked the coat and tie and shirt off of the child, held the clothes in his hands. Fought the urge to fling them into the furnace. 

The police would need them. So he folded them and placed them on the bureau; he washed their pink hands off in the sink. Bruce stood no more than a few inches from the small of Alfred’s back the whole night. Followed him into bed. Curled up into a tiny, grief-shaped ball in the corner.

Alfred’s head swam. His pulse throbbed in his ears, made worse by the hot tears the shock was still holding back. The pit in his stomach. The strings he could see winding together. The lines Martha Wayne had been humming just three hours ago in anticipation for the opera. _Ma sei Foscari, una voce. Va tuonandomi nel core: Forza contro il lor rigor l'innocenza ti darŕ._

They remained quiet. Bruce threw up on Alfred’s sheets. 

  
  


-

The phone rang. Alfred set the knife down. 

He stared at the landline for a long moment. Shook his head just once, slowly. He picked up the phone. 

“. . . Wayne Residence,” said Alfred. “How may I be of service?”

There was rain. It scuttled into the earpiece. Alfred could hear it. A throat cleared. 

“This, uh, Albert Pennyworth?” 

“Alfred,” Alfred corrected, “Pennyworth.” 

He was not going to say this was Sergeant James Gordon with the GCPD there has been an incident. But the words were there in Alfred’s head anyway. Alfred stared at the finely diced carrots on the cutting board for a long time, rubbed one cube between his fingers. 

He had chopped them last night, received a call last night, too, hadn’t he? It had to have been a dream, a peculiar one that gave him the oddest sense of déjà vu, though Alfred couldn’t remember it quite exactly, besides what the voice on the other line had said. Which he was not going to say again. Alfred was sure of it. That would be impossible. Still, he paused. 

Very slowly as if not to startle anyone (which was silly, he was alone in the house with the brunoise and pasta on the oven, completely, really alone), he began to brush the carrots into his palm. Scooped his hand up. The last diced cube had just fallen into his hand when the voice said, “Sir.”

Alfred stilled.

“This is Sergeant James Gordon with the GCPD. I have your boy with me. There’s been an incident.”

Something sizzled. Alfred had let the pasta boil over. 

-

“I know where he is,” Alfred snapped when the redhaired man at the police station opened his mouth. He hastened over to the small, black chair they had placed the small, black-covered boy in again. 

Bruce stared up at him emptily. His chin was red.

The guilt sunk its teeth in. The guilt threatened to swallow Alfred whole. 

-

  
  


Bruce lay in Alfred’s bed, trembling. It was quiet. They were quiet. They did not speak. But Alfred could hear something. The rain outside trembling on the glass windows. It had not let up. 

“Master Bruce. . .” His throat was dry. It cracked. 

How was he to say, “I knew exactly what was going to happen and did nothing”?

The dream last night—it must have been a dream—he should have _acted_ on it, however foolish it made him feel. 

Now his heart was in his throat, and an orphan was in his bed. 

Alfred stared up at the dark. Lifted his hand. He could just barely see the shine off the back of his knuckle in the blackness, the way it smeared as he shook. Then, trembling, he brought it down to rest on the soft, wet hair of the little boy next to him. 

“I am so sorry,” Alfred croaked.

Bruce quivered. The bed shifted as he got to his tiny knees.

He threw up on Alfred’s sheets. 

Alfred turned on the lights to clean them. Realized he had not taken Bruce out of his eveningware this time. 

There was blood on the sheets now, too. 

Alfred stood stiffly from the bed, grabbing the edge of his now un-white sheets to go to the laundry room. But then the world lilted, like a bottle being poured out.

It went

  
  


-

The phone. The knife. 

Alfred switched off the burner. His hands shook violently. He picked up the phone. 

Long beat. One more. _Ma sei Foscari, una voce. Va tuonandomi nel core. Ahem. Cooore. Don’t look at me like that, Alfred. [laughter]. I’m not stage-trained like yourself._ You _think I was good, don’t you, Bruce?_ The voice on the other end. Why wasn’t he speaking yet? Shouldn’t he have spoken by now? Must Alfred speak first? 

Alfred’s eyes squeezed shut tightly, burning. His throat was thick. He couldn’t. Speak first. 

“Is this, uh-m. Albert Pennyworth?”

“Yes,” said Alfred hastily. 

“This is,” started Sergeant James Gordon with the GCPD, who had his boy. (It was raining. Alfred could hear it.) There had been an incident.

The water sloshed resentfully inside the pot like prison keys jangling. 

-

“Sir,” said the redhaired man, the same voice as on the phone. _Forza contro il lor rigor l'innocenza ti darŕ._ He was not wearing a jacket. His hairline was damp. They were at the police station again. Alfred had just pulled up in the car, had not registered the drive. Alfred wondered if the man knew that he was stuck here, too. “He’s right over here.”

“Master Bruce,” called Alfred on instinct, picking up his step, never outwardly acknowledging the jacketless, redhaired man. Bruce’s head rose sluggishly, dark, empty eyes falling on Alfred. His wrists were crossed limply in his lap. His sleeves, his thumbs, his fingerbones were the color of damp paprika. 

Alfred stopped in front of the boy. Looked down, and Bruce Thomas Wayne looked up. 

It wasn’t disappointment, though maybe it should have been. It wasn’t You are not my parents. It wasn’t Why did you let us go off to the opera. I told you I due foscari sounded like the worst play ever. I am eight. Why should I go to an opera? Why did you let them _take_ me to the opera? Why did you let them die? How many times have you lived this and you still couldn’t save them? Why didn’t you save them? Why didn’t you save them for me? Why didn’t you save me, alfred tee-cee pennyworth? Save me. save me. why can’t you _ever_ save me from _anything?_

It wasn’t that.

It should have been.

But it wasn’t any of those things. Bruce only looked hollow. 

-

Bruce trembled. Alfred had carefully removed the too-big policeman’s jacket from his shoulders, unbuttoned his dark gray undercoat. Threw the gray coat and the white button-up underneath into the fireplace and watched them crackle and blacken and burn. Bruce watched, too. It was raining. They lay in Alfred’s bed. Because Bruce followed him everywhere. And Alfred would not say anything.

It was quiet. They did not speak. They did not speak. Bruce threw u

  
  


-

The phone rang. The knife came down on Alfred’s knuckle. 

A line of blood dropped from his finger to the wooden cutting board. Alfred stared at it, the red circle it made. The phone rang. Alfred gripped the side of the countertop to balance himself. 

The phone kept ringing. Then it stopped. They left a message. Alfred went nowhere. The police let themselves in. Said, 10:47 pee-em tonight. They got dead sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Sergeant James Gordon with the GCPD pulled in a minute later. He had the boy, he wasn't wearing a jacket, Bruce was wearing a large one, it was raining harder, they weren’t any wetter for it. 

This is different, thought Alfred, as they came through the door. Maybe this is the end. 

He needed it to be the end. He could not live like this. He could not keep failing this child.

He stripped Bruce out of the bloody clothes. He folded them. He said, “Here,” and thrust them at the police officer. He thought, We will do it differently. He had not wanted Bruce to be alone. He had not wanted to forsake Bruce in the hands of the police like he had by not going to the station. He had not intended to. He had simply gone blank.

Tonight needed to be different. 

He held Bruce’s hands under the sink until the porcelain was the color Bruce’s hands had been and his hands were the color of porcelain again. He buttoned him into his soft pajamas, stared at him in the mirror. Tucked Bruce into his own bed in Bruce’s own room. Looked down at him. 

Bruce stared. Back up. 

And his eyes were like. Like. They were— 

Alfred choked.

There was still a bloody thumbprint on the underside of Bruce’s jaw, his parents’ last touch, wet touch, and Alfred had missed it when he had cloistered the child by the sink and scrubbed his hands white and clean. 

Alfred trembled. Alfred slowly reached forward. And Alfred rubbed the blood off with his thumb.

It made his fingertip red. They were quiet, it was raining. 

This time, Alfred threw up. 

The rain outside still would not st

  
  


-

Alfred set the knife down. 

The phone did not ring. 

_Quest'onde protessero in culla, e il fremer del vento fu prima canzon. This wind they protected in the cradle and the trembling of wind was first song._

It was terrible, the hope. 

For a long time, he stared at the phone. It was light brown. It was clunky. It had buttons and a few blinking lights. It wasn’t ringing. He took a slow, almost experimental step back. It did not ring. It was not ringing. Maybe he could make it, drive to the opera in time to stop all of this from ever happening. Maybe he was early enough this time. Maybe he could save him. The phone did not ring. Alfred staggered back once more, bracing himself to start running. This time he could save them. This time he could _spare_ Bruce Wayne his grief, his misery. This time he could save him. 

Then it did. 

Alfred squeezed the phone in his hands until the plastic cracked. 

“This is Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth,” Alfred whispered miserably, feeling, approximately, like he might keel over and die. “An incident?” 

The voice was silent. 

The stove was hot, he watched it. Pressed his ribcage against it, wanted to lay his hand flat on the burner, didn’t. He watched the water bubble up to the edge of the pot and spill over. Already? Soon. It seemed soon for it to boil over. 

His eyes burned, squeezed shut. There was a tiny needle of a second where Alfred thought: Why is this happening to me? I am a failed stage actor. I am a servant. I am forty-two and have not done anything memorable I am not important _why?_

Then the thought was gone. Like that. It ate itself into nothing like a snake with its tail in its sharp mouth the _instant_ he remembered the sight he had seen five times now—that boy, that small boy whose hands were meant for stolen sugarcubes but were grouted with red in the lines of his palm instead. His large numb eyes. The way he had no one left in the entire world with any semblance of a string tied to him. No _forzaaaaa. Fooooorza. Forza contro il lor rigor l'innocenza ti darŕ. Now_ that _one was good, wasn’t it, Alfred? Oh, you’re joking, it_ was _good. Mummy was good, wasn’t she, Bruce? Oh, oh, that’s strength, Bruce, or power. Forza means strength._

“This is Sergeant James Gordon with the GCPD.” Pause. “Yes. I have your boy with me.” Pause. Pause. “There’s been an incident.”

-

Five. Alfred said five times but it wasn’t _five,_ was it? Before this round, Alfred had picked up the phone four times. Had seen Bruce in his miniature tuxedo and parent’s blood four times, not five. Except. There was another time. 

Wasn’t there? Earlier. 

Alfred had been hunched over the stovetop, smelling butter and vegetables and pasta. There had been a clunky, brown phone that seemed terribly old-fashioned now. It had been raining then, too. Sergeant James Gordon of the GCPD who had his boy had had his boy then, too. There had been an incident. That had _been_ the incident. 

But that was blurry. It was so long ago. Twenty years. No. Alfred remembered. _Sixteen_ long years. How was he living it again? How was he here so vividly, everything exactly as he remembered it being? 

Alfred was standing in the middle of the police station, where he had come to pick up Bruce. He staggered. It was like a bottle lilting again, decanting right back into Alfred’s head. He was not forty-two, anymore, really. Nor was Bruce eight years old, anymore, though the one in front of him was. 

Bruce Thomas Wayne. 

A compassionate, brilliant, stubborn, reckless, loyal, _awkward_ adult. The dearest person to Alfred who still walked on this world. Who didn't know he had every last one of Alfred's strings. 

He could _see_ it, then, and wondered how he had possibly forgotten his Bruce, a young man, a bat-man, and all the precious, infuriating years with him, when the shellshocked little orphan in front of him in the little chair looked so much like him. 

He wondered if he was trapped here, forever. If this was the closest he could get to Bruce Wayne, trapped in this loop, living every moment failing and failing and _failing_ to come to in time to prevent his tragedy. Alfred's greatest failure, his worst fear come to life and played on repeat. The immensity of his failure struck him again, brought him down. 

He staggered the last few steps to the child before his knees gave. He sensed Bruce start, but that made Alfred’s eyes sear even more. He was so small like this, so innocent. 

Alfred seized the child Bruce’s tiny, cold fingers in his, vision beginning to swim until he couldn’t even make out the liverspots on the back of his own hands. His mouth trembled so much it hurt. Bruce's hands were wet with blood because Alfred had failed to protect him. 

“I couldn’t,” he choked. He pressed Bruce’s small hands into one of his own so he could cup his soft, tear-stained cheek. He rubbed the boy’s cheek again and again and again because he couldn’t do more, couldn’t make _anything_ better. The lump hardened in his throat. “I was never _there,_ Master Bruce. I couldn’t stop this.” 

A long, low keen broke out of him. It took him a second to catch his breath, panting. Opening his hot, wet eyes was like cutting them with a knife, and his vision blurred again. His breath trembled. In an hour, the child would not remember, Alfred would answer the phone, and they would do it all again. It did not matter what he said. 

Except Alfred had to confess or he would snap in two. 

“I tried, Master Bruce. I wanted you to have them. If I could have saved them, or you, lad, I would have. I’m so _sorry,_ Master Bruce. I could never save you.”

Bruce’s eyes were large and dark like a deer with a gun at its nose. Startled yet. Not. Resigned. His chin was red. 

“I wanted to _save_ you,” Alfred sobbed. 

_“Alfred,”_ said Br

-

It was quiet. Water was falling. 

Alfred gasped raggedly, eyes flying open. 

“Alfred. Alfred?”

With some difficulty, Alfred turned his head, vision still focusing. He was lying on his back. His eyes felt raw and swollen, but the sight he saw made him want to weep. 

Leaning over the rail of what must have been a hospital bed was Bruce Wayne— _his_ Bruce Wayne, _his,_ strapping and thick-necked and anything _but_ tiny, with a wingspan almost as long as Alfred was tall. His expression was worried. But when Alfred met his eyes, he could see the tension in Bruce’s shoulders and mouth relax just slightly. Alfred’s heart ached for him. _“Alfred,”_ Bruce breathed, drawing closer. “You’re awake.”

Tears sprung to Alfred’s eyes. Immediately, the tension came pouring back over Bruce’s face. 

Bruce’s brow was furrowing, frantic, and he began to step back as if in a frenzy, eyes flickering all over the place. “The antidote must not have—”

“No,” Alfred croaked. Bruce, 24 and wonderful and _his_ and traumatized, stilled, then drew nearer to the bed with startled, black eyes. The stalactites behind him dripped. The cave was quiet. “Master Bruce. . . Bruce. Bruce.”

“I’m here, Alfred.”

Alfred willed his hands to move, but they wouldn’t. He felt drained from just the effort, and squeezed his eyes shut again. 

Then there was a hand around his, fingers closing in over Alfred’s pulsepoint, and he sliced his eyes back open. Almost as if he had read his mind, Bruce had clasped his hand in Alfred’s, still staring wide-eyed, worriedly down at him. 

The act made him sob quietly. The hand around his wrist tightened. 

Alfred wanted so _badly_ to touch Bruce’s cheek, rub the hollow there. All he could manage was weakly squeezing his fingers back. “Master Bruce . . .I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so _sorry.”_

Bruce started. “Alfred, _no.”_ He sounded horrified. _“I’m_ sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize Crane’s gas lived on in residue.” He shook his head with self-loathing, but Alfred could barely see it, eyes burning and smearing in the meantime, and Alfred shook his head too. 

“I couldn’t save you,” Alfred whimpered, fingers slipping out of Bruce’s. “I could _never—”_

“Alfred, I think you’re delirious. The antidote, or, or maybe the residue is still—”

“No. _No.”_ Alfred shook his head again violently, making his temples pound. The lump in his throat choked him. “I wanted to—I wanted to _save_ you, but I always let them die. I tried, Master Bruce, but I could never, I could never—” a last, wracking sob broke out of him, and he couldn’t speak any more, dissolving into tears. The hand in his disappeared. He felt barely conscious. “I couldn’t _save_ you,” he mouthed.

“Alfred,” said Bruce softly. Something brushed over his forehead. Alfred forced himself to focus on the face above him, finally registering that it was a hand ghosting over his temples. “Alfred, you already did save me.” Bruce fell into a whisper. “You saved me.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i love the idea of alfred's greatest fear being failing bruce and not saving him from tragedy and then having to relive that feeling of helplessness over and over and over


End file.
